New AFP ad: You want to talk about layoffs? Let’s talk about Solyndra, then

posted at 7:42 pm on January 13, 2012 by Allahpundit

Via Jake Tapper, who notes that this is conveniently timed to complicate any opportunistic Democratic messaging on Romney’s Bain record and that the spot is not, shall we say, strictly accurate in all its particulars. The Obama quote at the end, for instance, is truncated to make it sound like he’s talking about Solyndra specifically rather than Energy’s green-loans program generally.

Not sure about these objections, though:

The ad depicts the president as giving “Solyndra half a billion in taxpayer money. Politics as usual. Within the administration, the company’s potential collapse had long been discussed. Knowing all along Solyndra would have to fire their workers. But Solyndra held off until after the 2010 elections.”

That White House officials “knew all along” that Solyndra would have to fire their workers isn’t true. The ad is referring to an email released two months ago indicating that an adviser to the company’s main investor, Argonaut Equity, wrote on Oct. 30, 2010, that officials from the Department of Energy “did push very hard for us to hold our announcement” of layoffs “to Nov. 3rd – oddly they didn’t give a reason for that date.”…

The ad says: “1,100 workers had no idea that they would be fired, but the Obama administration knew. All that mattered was the 2010 election – ‘optics,’ not workers.”

While it may be that White House officials wanted the announcement to be made after the November 2010 elections – the only proof of that is that one e-mail, and the White House denies the charge — the layoffs that were announced were not as AFP describes. What is true: the day after the 2010 elections, on November 3, Solyndra announced it would lay end its contracts with more than 100 contractors, lay off 40 employees, and close one of its factories.

In other words, there were two rounds of layoffs — one, involving a small number of workers, right after the midterm election and then a purge of the entire workforce last August once the company finally went bust. The ad slyly conflates the two by hinting that the White House knew all along that second, massive round of layoffs was coming when really it only knew about the first. And even in that case, the only evidence we have that they knew is an e-mail from a Solyndra investor claiming that they did.

Or at least, that was the only evidence until today. New from Bloomberg:

The Obama administration knew before the 2010 election that Solyndra LLC, a solar-panel maker that received a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, planned to fire workers, according to e-mails released today.

The messages don’t indicate that anyone from the White House directed Solyndra to delay announcing the layoffs until after the vote. Previously released e-mails, indicating the Energy Department urged Solyndra to postpone the cuts, have been cited by House Republicans who say politics influenced Solyndra’s award and last-ditch rescue bid that put taxpayers behind $75 million in private investment.

“Here’s the deal — Solyndra is going to announce they are laying off 200 of their 1200 workers,” Heather Zichal, a White House adviser, wrote to Carol Browner, then director of the office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, and other officials on Oct. 27, 2010. “No es bueno.”

That’s the first evidence that I’m aware of corroborating the bombshell claim from November that anyone inside the administration knew the layoffs were coming. It doesn’t prove that the White House, let alone the Energy Department, actually pressured Solyndra to hold off on the layoffs until after the election, but the White House had a much more obvious interest in preventing a Republican takeover of the House than some federal agency did. Can’t wait to see what the next Friday afternoon document dump brings!

As for the claim that the White House knew “all along Solyndra would have to fire their workers,” it’d be more accurate to say that they should have known much, much earlier, certainly long before they threw millions more into this sinkhole as part of a restructuring to try to keep it afloat. Remember, PricewaterhouseCoopers was ringing alarm bells about Solyndra’s viability in early 2010, months before Obama went out to the plant for his big green-jobs photo op. Months before that, one of Solyndra’s own investors was wondering why the federal government would throw more than half a billion dollars at a risky solar venture that wasn’t even pulling in revenues of $100 million a year. And months before that, OMB employees were complaining that the White House was rushing them to hurry up and approve the loan so that Obama could go get his picture taken already. So no, they didn’t necessarily “know” that Solyndra’s workers would all end up being laid off. They simply didn’t think much about it at all because they were too keen on impressing the left with their astounding generosity towards green companies, especially green companies whose big investors included top Obama bundlers. Much better, no? The pushback here from the White House, I take it, will be that not every investment succeeds and that they shouldn’t be judged solely by the turkeys on their balance sheet. To which Mitt Romney, alleged cold-hearted layoff specialist, replies: Exactly.

A $6 million ad buy for this, by the way. Coming soon to a swing-state TV market near you.

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As for the claim that the White House knew “all along Solyndra would have to fire their workers,” it’d be more accurate to say that they should have known much, much earlier, certainly long before they threw millions more into this sinkhole as part of a restructuring to try to keep it afloat.

They either put politics and optics above taxpayers or they were incompetent. Take your pick. Or all of the above works, too.

The Obama administration knew before the 2010 election that Solyndra LLC, a solar-panel maker that received a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, planned to fire workers, according to e-mails released today.

Why would anyone be surprised or doubt this? This is the same sort of thing that happened with Caterpillar and the Porkulus. Barky claimed that they had to get the Porkulus cash so that Caterpillar would rehire workers AS HE CLAIMED THE CEO TOLD HIM and the Caterpillar CEO came out the next day and totally contradicted it. Another bald-faced Barky lie. Didn’t matter. They shoved the Porkulus through, anyway, and Caterpillar fired more.

How much more of this will America take? Really. Because there ain’t much left, anymore.

As for the claim that the White House knew “all along Solyndra would have to fire their workers,” it’d be more accurate to say that they should have known much, much earlier, certainly long before they threw millions more into this sinkhole as part of a restructuring to try to keep it afloat.

??? Wait, now I’m confused. I thought it was known that Obama knew of layoffs, and told them not to do it until after the 2010 elections. From WaPo:

The Obama administration, which gave the solar company Solyndra a half-billion-dollar loan to help create jobs, asked the company to delay announcing it would lay off workers until after the hotly contested November 2010 midterm elections that imperiled Democratic control of Congress, newly released e-mails show.

As a detailed analysis of previous post-recession economies from Phil Gramm at the Wall Street Journal points out, if the current economic recovery did as well as the past 10 recoveries (post recession) since World War II, almost 12 million more people would be employed and our GDP would be on the fast track to recovery:

“On average, three years after the four deepest previous recessions started, real GDP was 7.6% higher than the pre-recession level. During the Obama recovery, real GDP is up only 0.1%. Forty months after the start of the 1953, 1957, 1973 and 1981 recessions, total employment was on average 4.7% higher than the pre-recession peaks, while total employment today is still down 4.7%—that’s a total employment gap of 13.9 million jobs.”

In 1982, unemployment was at 10.8% and the Feds pursued a monetary policy to stop the risk of inflation. Today, after a year of what was supposed to be the recovery summer, jobless claims have risen and inflation is growing because the rise in consumer prices. The recovery we are having now is worse than the post-recession in the 80’s.

“If we had matched the 1982 recovery rate, today annual per-capita income would be $4,154 higher than before the recession—that’s an extra $16,600 for a family of four—and some 15.7 million more Americans would have jobs. That’s enough jobs to employ 100% of the 13.5 million Americans currently classified as unemployed. In addition, we would have provided jobs for 30% of both the 2.4 million discouraged or marginally attached workers and the 4.8 million who have totally dropped out of the work force since January 2008.”

Three, and not one of them is costing us taxpayers a dime. Your guy, well he and his wife have one big one payed for by us, their right, and another half payed for by a convicted felon. Yet, when you include the millions they spend on their non-stoppable vacation that is called a presidency, and on our dime, I guess they could’ve bought 20 or 30 huge mansions, in the finest enclaves in the world.

While I do not support Romney, your class warfare crap is so yesterday. You and getalife need to get a life.

CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra.

uhhhhhhh!…JugEars has all his kickback money in off-shores, no one can trace. His money won’t even show up after November 2012, but he will start having to spend it by then. He may have mastered how to use his ATM card by then too!

the spot is not, shall we say, strictly accurate in all its particulars. The Obama quote at the end, for instance, is truncated to make it sound like he’s talking about Solyndra specifically rather than Energy’s green-loans program generally.

Get out of here! You mean it’s taken out of context? Why, I like to fire people who do that!

I don’t get some of the comments here. How is this ad about class warfare?

earlgrey133 on January 13, 2012 at 7:58 PM

Don’tworryaboutit 133!
We have one, that comes to drool here as often as he can!
When his bib gets saturated, you won’t see him anymore.
For example…you won’t see him in the thread below “A dance party for Obama!” or Ed’s 11:54AM piece…or many others. I guess that’s when he gets his diaper changed.
On some day’s he has an opportunity to drool a lot, on other days he seems to have a case of diahrrea, and the topics require him to be gone for extended lengths of time… for talcum powder to avoid a rash!

Yes, and a far more effective use of your money than giving it to the campaign or the RNC. What Obama and Soros and the unions don’t realize, there will be close to a billion spent by our own Super PACs this year, and every dollar will count. And, we’re talking players here who in the past kind of stayed out of the mix, thinking that they and the country would be okay no matter whether there was a D or an R in the White House. Obama, however, has turned some neutrals into patriots.

The Count on January 13, 2012 at 8:16 PM
Yes, and a far more effective use of your money than giving it to the campaign or the RNC. What Obama and Soros and the unions don’t realize, there will be close to a billion spent by our own Super PACs this year, and every dollar will count. And, we’re talking players here who in the past kind of stayed out of the mix, thinking that they and the country would be okay no matter whether there was a D or an R in the White House. Obama, however, has turned some neutrals into patriots.

1,100 layoffs won’t compare to when the Military has to clear out 80,000 Soldiers, Marines, and contractors to unemployment lines. They’ll figure out a way to make it 8.4% though with the Democratic magic calculator.

This is a good ad. Romney should have used the Solyndra example all along. Bain would have done its due diligence and NOT invested in a company with net operating losses. The government? Taxpayers on the hook for half a billion dollars.

Maybe Mitt should release his tax returns and say “Over my 40 year career, I earned alot, but I’m still worth less than taxpayers lost on one Obama Bet, Solyndra.”

Maybe it’s just me but I find the message of this ad confusing. On the one hand it reminds us taxpayer dollars were spent to prop up a failed, possibly corrupt, green energy company whose principals were big Obama donors. So far so good. But the part about laying off employees kinda contradicts the crony capitalism message. Would it have been better if we loaned them even more money and kept them employed (albeit temporarily until the house of cards collapsed)?

Seeing how the donks deal in half truths, it’s high time we use their beloved alinsky bible to turn the tables to isolate, personalize, freeze and repeat again and again. Force Oboobi to defend his failures. While they’re running this, they need to produce one on fast n furious. Tell how ATF and Eric killed at least two and maybe 100 within the USA and at least 300 to as many as 2000 Mexicans. We don’t know for sure since the DOJ has been stalling on the truth, but the probabilities that the numbers are good is stronger than the AGW data.

After that ad is launched, pick another topic and alinskize it. Continue thru to election day. This will be fun to watch DWS’s head spin.

The article did a lot of talking about being able to prove the administration “knew” the company was going bankrupt but that is only necessary in court. Not even democrats believe that the administration believe that. In the court of public opinion all doubts have been erased.

Its sad that we need something like “superpacs” because our Congress is testicularly challenged, Justice is morally challenged and the media is intellectually challenged. If just one of them did the right thing they would drag the other two with them, eventually, with a lot of pouting and whining. I will leave the presidency out, I think they are doing/getting exactly what they want.

I am totally OK with this ad. Obama will be running ads that are so deceptive that we need to use half truths or take things out of context too. We are going to be stuck with a weak moderate candidate so it will be up to Conservative superpacs to go after Obama and defeat him!!!

Correct me if I’m wrong but the case Obama is going to make is he believes in “investing” spending in an effort to create jobs thru Public-Private partnerships. When Romney is the guy who takes the loan guarantees, the tax credits and the subsidies from those partnerships as way to gain the system and to make millions for his investors by cutting jobs.

I really don’t think AFP should be attacking just yet, let the guy make his case and attack him on that. Otherwise he’ll just put whatever you say on this matter it in a context of “Warrior of the middle class” vs “Warrior of WallStreet”

The sad thing is….no matter how you approach this, you don’t want to be talking about poor vs rich with Romney as your spokesman.